Journal Archives

The Center for American Progress (CAP), a Washington-based Democratic Party think tank funded by Wall Street, including private health insurers and their lobbying group, unveiled a new healthcare proposal designed to confuse supporters of “Medicare for All” and protect private health insurance profits. It is receiving widespread coverage in ‘progressive’ media outlets. We must be aware of what is happening so that we are not fooled into another ‘public option’ dead end.*

The fact that CAP is using Medicare for All language is both a blessing and a curse. It means Medicare for All is so popular that they feel a need to co-opt it, and it means that they are trying to co-opt it, which will give Democrats an opportunity to use it to confuse people.

This effort could be preparation for the possibility that Democrats win a majority in Congress in 2018 or 2020. It is normal for the pendulum to swing to the party opposite the President’s party during the first term in office. If Democrats win a majority, they will be expected to deliver on health care, but they face a dilemma of having to please their campaign donors, which includes the health insurance industry, or pleasing their voters, where 75% support single payer health care.

It’s not unusual for the US fare to much worse than other rich countries—and at times, middle income ones, too—when it comes to public health metrics.

Among the most unfortunate of the US’s numerous poor statistical showings is in infant deaths. According to the latest available United Nations data—each country’s data are from some year between 2010 and 2015—the US ranks 30th of 193 countries in infant mortality rate, the ratio of babies that die before turning one year old. In the US, there are more than three times as many infant deaths for every 1,000 births as there are in the countries leading the list.

The U.S. dollar declines when the dollar value is lower compared to other currencies in the foreign exchange market. It means the dollar index falls. It also means the euro to dollar conversion is higher because euros get stronger and can buy more dollars when the U.S. currency weakens. It could also threaten the yen carry trade because a weaker dollar often means a stronger yen.

A declining dollar can also mean a fall in the value of U.S. Treasurys.

This drives up Treasury yields and therefore, interest rates. For more, see What Is the Relationship Between Treasury Notes and Mortgage Rates?

It can mean that foreign central banks and sovereign wealth funds are holding fewer dollars too. This lowers the demand for dollars.

I have a simple request to journalists, columnist, pundits, and others writing about forthcoming efforts of Republicans to cut Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and the anti-poverty programs that make up our safety net. Call such efforts “cuts.” Do not call them “reforms,” “changes,” “overhauls,” “fixes,” “reshaping,” “modernizing,” or any other euphemism that could easily be misconstrued. At least, do not do so without also clearly defining what they really are, which is cuts.

On August 12, Trump and the world witnessed armed white supremacists in the streets and an attempted mass murder by an ISIS-preferred method. Over the course of three working days, he figured out a way to get firmly and even defiantly on the wrong side of it all. In a pair of transparently strained attempts at being Presidential, Trump struggled to muster a condemnation of literal fascism on the literal march; he identified the presence of “very fine people” on both the fascist and anti-fascist sides of what is honestly not a working binary, and he reserved the phrase “truly bad people” for the news media, which had been so unfair, so unfair, in their response. By Tuesday, the issue was once again the media’s selective and slanted and dishonest treatment of him. By Thursday morning, Trump was tweeting mournfully about the tragedy of Confederate monuments being removed from public parks. He finally sounded like himself again.

Among the segment of the population that’s put off by things like a president refusing to forcefully condemn Nazi rioters, this has raised some uncomfortable questions about Trump’s beliefs. Does he really share any or many of the beliefs with the racists and nationalists and racist-nationalists who made his campaign their cause, or is this a political calculation against criticizing a small but important part of his base? Was his decision to defend statues of famous slave masters a reflection of his perspective on history, or maybe a darkly strategic reading of the national political mood? Did he not know that what he said was historically incoherent and obviously wrong? It’s right to wonder, but we should be past asking these questions about this man at this point. The most significant thing to know about Donald Trump’s politics or process, his beliefs or his calculations, is that he is an asshole; the only salient factor in any decision he makes is that he absolutely does not care about the interests of the parties involved except as they reflect upon him. Start with this, and you already know a lot. Start with this, and you already know that there are no real answers to any of these questions.

Donald Trump is hemorrhaging support among the American people, and now more than 40 percent of them think it's time to start the process to impeach him, a new poll finds. The number is higher than the percentage of Americans who said they planned to vote for the president in the 2020 election.

Colorado officials and pro-abortion advocates are ecstatic over new statistics showing that the teen abortion rate has dropped 64 percent in Colorado over eight years, due mostly to a state-run program offering free or low-cost intrauterine devices (IUDs) and implants to women. Teen pregnancies are down 54 percent.